HOW I WENT TO SEE TORODE OF HERM
The next morning found me running in under La Givaude for the landing-place
on Brecqhou, where my boat could lie safely in spite of the rising tide.
I was in the best of spirits, for low spirits come of having nothing to do,
or not knowing what to do or how to do it. My next step was settled, lead
where it might. I was going privateering, and now I was going to see
Carette, and I intended to let her know that I was going and why, so that
there should be no mistake about it while I was away.
I scrambled gaily up to the path that leads into the Island, and everything
was shining bright, like the inside of an ormer shell--the sea as blue as
the sky, except close under the headlands, where it was clear, soft green;
the waves farther out flashed in the sunlight and showed their white teeth
wherever they met the rocks; and the rocks were yellow and brown and black,
and all fringed with tawny seaweed, and here beside me the golden-rod
flamed yellow and orange, and the dark green bracken swung lazily in the
breeze.
And then, of a sudden, a shot rang out, and a bullet flew past my head, and
cut my whistling short.
"What fool's that?" I shouted at the smoke that floated out from behind a
lump of rock in front, and a young man got up lazily from behind it, and
stood looking at me as he rammed home another charge.
"You'll be hurting someone if you don't take care," I said.
"I do when I care to. That was only a hint. Who are you, and what do you
want here?"
"I'm Phil Carré, of Belfontaine. I want to see Monsieur Le Marchant--and
Ma'm'zelle Carette."
"Oh, you do, do you? And what do you want with them?"
"I'll tell them when I see them. Do you always wish your friends
good-morning with a musket on Brecqhou?"
"Our friends don't come till they're asked."
"Then you don't have many visitors, I should say."
"All we want," was the curt reply.
He was a tall, well-built fellow, some years older than myself,
good-looking, as all the Le Marchants were, defiant of face and careless in
manner. He looked, in fact, as though it would not have troubled him in the
least if his bullet had gone through my head.
He had finished loading his gun, and stood blocking the way, with no
intention of letting me pass. And how long we might have stood there I do
not know, when I saw another head bobbing along among the golden-rod, and
another of the brothers came up and stood beside him.
"What is it, then, Martin? Who is he?" he asked, staring at me.
"Says he's Phil Carré, of Belfontaine, but--"
And the other dark face broke into a smile. "Tiens, I remember. You came
across once before--"
"Yes. You had the measles."
"And what brings you this time, Phil Carré?"
"I want to speak with Monsieur Le Marchant."
"And to see Carette, I think you said, Monsieur Phil Carré," said the
other.
"Certainly."
"Come along, then," said Helier, the new-comer. "There is no harm in Phil
Carré. You have not by any chance gone into the preventive service,
Monsieur Carré?" he laughed.
"Not quite. I'm off to the privateering. It's that I want to speak to your
father about."
"How then?" he asked with interest, as we walked along towards the great
wooden house in the hollow. "How does it concern him?"
"Torode of Herm is the cleverest privateer round here, they say. I thought
to try with him, and your father knows more about him than anyone else."
"Ah! Torode of Herm! Yes, he is a clever man is Torode. But he won't take
you, mon gars. He picks his own, and there is not an Island man among
them."
The first thing I saw when I entered the house was Carette, busy at one of
the bunks in the dimness at the far end of the room. She looked round, and
then straightened up in surprise.
"Why, Phil? What are you doing here? One moment"--and I saw that she was
tying a bandage round the arm of the man in the bunk. His eyes caught the
light from the windows and gleamed savagely at me under his rumpled black
hair. A similar face looked out from an adjoining bunk. When she had
finished she came quickly across to me.
"Measles again?" I said, remembering my former visit.
"Yes, measles," she said, with the colour in her face and questions in her
eyes.
"I came to see your father, and if I was in luck, yourself also, Carette."
"He is sleeping," she said, with a glance towards a side room. "He was
anxious about these two, and he would take the night watch. They are
feverish, you see."
"I will wait."
"He won't be long. He never takes much sleep. What do you want to--" and
then some sudden thought sent a flush of colour into her face and a quick
enquiry into her eyes, and she stopped short and stood looking at me.
"It's this, Carette--" and then the door of the side room opened quietly
and Jean Le Marchant came out, looking at us with much surprise.
He was very little changed since I had seen him last. It was the same keen,
handsome face, with its long white moustache and cold dark eyes, somewhat
tired at the moment with their night duties.
"And this is--?" he asked suavely, as I bowed.
"It is Phil Carré, of Belfontaine, father," said Carette quickly. "He has
come to see you."
"Very kind of Monsieur Carré. It is not after my health you came to
enquire, monsieur?"
"No, sir. It is this. I have decided to go privateering, and I want to go
with the best man. I am told Torode of Herm is the best, and that you can
tell me more about him than anyone else."
"Ah--Torode! Yes, he is a very clever man is Torode--a clever man, and very
successful. And privateering is undoubtedly the game nowadays. Honest
free-trading isn't in it compared with the privateering, though even that
isn't what it was, they say. Like everything else, it is overdone, and many
mouths make scant faring. And so you want to go out with Torode?" he asked
musingly.
"That is my idea. You see, monsieur, I have spent nearly four years in the
trading to the Indies, and I am about as well off as when I started--except
in experience. Now I want to make something--all I can, and as quickly as I
can. And," I said, plunging headlong at my chief object in coming, "my
reasons stand there," and I pointed to Carette, who jumped at the
suddenness of it, and coloured finely, and bit her lip, and sped away on
some household duty which she had not thought of till that moment.
Monsieur Le Marchant smiled, and the two young men laughed out.
"Ma foi!" said the old man. "You are frank, mon gars."
"It is best so. I wanted you to know, and I wanted Carette to know, though
I think she has known it always. I have never thought of any but Carette,
and as soon as I am able I will ask her to marry me."
"Whether I have other views for her or not?" said her father.
"No other could possibly love Carette as I do,"--at which he smiled briefly
and the others grinned. "I have only one wish in life, and that is to care
for her and make her happy."
"That is for the future, so we need not talk about it now. If you make a
fortune at the privateering--who knows?"
"And what can you tell me of Torode, monsieur? Is he the best man to go out
with?"
"He has been more successful than most, without doubt," and the keen cold
eyes rested musingly on me, while he seemed to be turning deep thoughts in
his mind. "Yes. Why not try him? And after your first voyage come across
again, and we will talk it over. Martin,"--to the man who had given me
good-morning with his musket,--"you are too long away from your post.
Allez!"
"There was nothing in sight till Monsieur Carré came round the corner,"
said Martin, and went off to his look-out.
"These preventive men, with their constant new regulations, are an
annoyance," said the old man quietly. "Some of them will be getting hurt
one of these days. It is a pity the Government can't leave honest traders
alone. They worry you also on Sercq, I suppose?"
"I hear of them. But we have nothing to do with the trading at Belfontaine,
so they don't trouble us."
"Ah no, I remember. Well, come across again after your first voyage and
tell us how you get on, Monsieur Carré."
Helier sauntered back with me towards the landing-place. Carette had
disappeared. I wondered if my plain speaking had offended her, but I was
glad she had heard.
I pulled out of the little bay and ran up my lug and sped straight across
to Herm. Every rock was known to me, even though it showed only in a ring
of widening circles or a flattening of the dancing waves into a straining
coil, for we had been in the habit of fishing and vraicking here regularly
until Torode took possession. And many was the time I had hung over the
side of the rocking boat and sought in the depths for the tops of the great
rock-pillars which once held up the bridge that joined Brecqhou to Herm
and Jethou. But now the fishing and vraicking were stopped, for Torode
liked visitors as little as did Jean Le Marchant.
And as I went I thought of Carette and how she looked when I spoke about
her to her father. And one minute I thought I had seen in her a brief look
which was not entirely discontent, and the next minute I was in doubt.
Perhaps it was a gleam of anger and annoyance. I could not tell, for the
chief thing I had seen in her face was undoubtedly a vast confusion at the
publicity of my declaration. In my mind also was the contradiction of
Helier Le Marchant's assertion that Torode would take no Island man into
his crew, and his fathers advice to go and try him. I was inclined to think
that Helier would prove right, for, even with my four years' experience of
men and things, I saw that Monsieur Le Marchant was beyond my
understanding.
My boat swirled into the narrow way between Herm and Jethou, where the
water came up lunging and thrusting like great black jelly-fish. I dropped
my sail and took the oars, and stood with my face to the bows and pulled
cautiously among the traps and snares that lay thick on every side and
still more dangerously out of sight. So I crept round the south of Herm and
drew into the little roadstead on the west.
And the first thing I saw, and saw no other for a while, was the handsomest
ship I had ever set eyes on. A long low black schooner, with a narrow
beading of white at deck level, and masts that tapered off into
fishing-rods. She was pierced for six guns a-side, and a great tarpaulin
cover on the forecastle and another astern hinted at something heavier
there. Her lines and finish were so graceful that I felt sure she was
French built, for English builders ever consider strength before beauty. A
very fast boat, I judged, but how she would behave in dirty weather I was
not so sure. Anyway, a craft to make a sailor's heart hungry to see her
loosed and free of the seas. She sat the water like a gull, so lightly that
one half expected a sudden unfolding of wings and a soaring flight into the
blue.
I was still gazing with all my eyes, and drifting slowly in, when a sharp
hail brought me round facing a man who leaned with his arms on a wall of
rock and looked over and down at me.
"Hello there!"
"Hello!" I replied, and saw that it was young Torode himself.
From my position I could see little except the rising ground in the middle
of the island, but I got the impression, chiefly no doubt from what I had
heard, and from the thin curls of smoke that rose in a line behind him,
that there was quite a number of houses there. In fact the place had all
the look of a fortified post.
"Tiens! It is Monsieur Carré, is it not? And what may Monsieur Carré want
here?" His tone was somewhat masterful, if not insolent. I felt an
inclination to resent it, but bethought me in time that such could be no
help to my plans, and that, moreover, nothing was to be gained by
concealment.
"I came to see your father. Is he to be seen?"
"So? What about?"
"I want to join his ship there for the privateering. She's a beauty."
"Oh-ho! Tired of honest trading?"
"I didn't know privateering had become dishonest."
"Bit different from what you've been accustomed to, isn't it?"
"Bit more profitable anyway, so they say. Are you open for any hands?"
But Torode had turned and was in conversation with someone inside the
rampart. I heard my own name mentioned, and presently he disappeared and
his place was taken by an older man whom I knew instinctively for the great
Torode himself.
A massive black head, and a grim dark face with a week's growth of
bristling black hair about it, and a dark moustache,--a strong lowering
face, and a pair of keen black eyes that bored holes in one; that was
Torode of Herm as I first set eyes on him.
He stared at me so long and fixedly, as if he had never seen anything like
me before, that at last, out of sheer discomfort, I had to speak.
"Monsieur Torode?" I asked, and after another staring pause, he said
gruffly--
"B'en! I am Torode. What is it you want?"
"A berth on your ship there."
"And why? Who are you, then?"
"Your son knows me. My name is Carré,--Phil Carré. I come from Sercq."
"Where there?"
"Belfontaine."
"Does your father live there?"
"He's dead these twenty years. I live with my mother and my grandfather."
He seemed to be turning this over in his mind, and presently he asked--
"And they want you to go privateering?"
"I don't say they want me to. It's I want to go. They are willing--at all
events they don't object."
"And why do you go against their wishes?"
"Well, it's this way, Monsieur Torode. I've been four voyages to the West
and there's no great things in it. I want to be doing something more for
myself."
"Why don't you try the free-trading?"
"Ah, there! We have never taken to the free-trading, but I don't know why."
"Afraid maybe."
"No, it's not that. There's more risk privateering."
"Well, then?"
"My folks don't like it. That's all I know."
"But they'll let you go privateering?"
"Yes," I said, with a shrug at my own lack of understanding on that point.
"Privateering's honest business after all."
"And free-trading isn't! You'll never make a privateer, mon gars. You're
too much in leading-strings."
"I don't know," I said, somewhat ruffled. "I have seen some service. We
fought a Frenchman in the West Indies, and I've been twice wrecked."
"So! Well, we're full up, and business is bad or we wouldn't be lying
here."
"And you won't give me a trial?"
"No!"
"And that's the last word?"
"That's the last word."
"Then I'll wish you good-day, monsieur. I must try elsewhere," and I
dropped into my seat and pulled away down the little roadstead.
Monsieur Torode was still leaning over the wall, and watching me fixedly,
when I turned the corner of the outer ridge of rocks and crept away
through the mazy channels towards Peter Port. When I got farther out, and
could get an occasional glimpse of the rampart, he was still leaning on it
and was still staring out at me just as I had left him.